NATURALLY, as a waste management company Yorwaste Ltd is single-mindedly dedicated to the environment.

It is hardly surprising that the 125-employee company, based in Northallerton, is pitching to become the Evening Press Environmental Business of the Year.

Yorwaste operates six landfill sites in North Yorkshire from Scarborough in the east to Skipton in the west and manages 23 household waste recycling centres on behalf of North Yorkshire County Council and the City of York Council.

It also operates two Materials Recycling Facilities for commercial, kerbside and bring bank systems in York and Scarborough. All these operations together receive nearly one million tonnes of waste per year from the region.

A recycling facility at Harewood Whin treats construction and demolition waste from Greater York to produce secondary aggregates, topsoil, wood and metals and the plant, after recent refurbishment is now capable of processing up to 100,000 tonnes per year.

Yorwaste's new purpose-built waste transfer station at Tancred accepts household and commercial waste from Northallerton, Richmond and the surrounding areas and also sifts paper and cardboard for recycling.

A new £1 million materials recycling facility at Seamer Carr complements the company's other transfer station at Hessay, near York, and sorts and reprocesses materials such as paper, cardboard, plastic, glass, aluminium and steel cans.

Its kerbside paper collection contracts with Harrogate district Council and Hambleton and Craven district council cover more than 70,000 houses and it collects similar dry, recyclable materials from 85,000 properties in York.

Updated: 12:13 Thursday, August 05, 2004